Trump continues to sue Democrats over election results, his lawyers still promise to provide “hard evidence” of collusion, and mainstream media tirelessly explain that this is all fiction. However, not so long ago, another theory appeared: Trump may try to put pressure on the state authorities and force them to send electors of the Republicans , even if according to official figures, Biden won in the state. The Eastern Herald explains why it doesn’t work that way.
In the American elections, the devil will break his leg. At least in the part that deals with legal formalities. The fact is that each of the 50 states has its own special rules. And this goes for everything: mail-order voting, early voting, voter IDs, recounts, and certification. In each state, everything is purely individual, there are no general patterns.
For example, there was a recount in Georgia, and right now a similar procedure is underway in Wisconsin. These recalculations differ from each other as much as a Mustang car is from an animal.
In Georgia, according to the recount rules that one of the candidates may request, ballots are not studied at all. People only manually count the same voices without checking them for authenticity. An audit there can be ordered only after the completion of the recount and only through a court. This is what the Trump team is trying to do.
In Wisconsin, the recount automatically includes an audit of votes. There, the members of the commissions study the ballots under the supervision of representatives of both parties. Thus, if there were indeed ballot stuffing in this state, as the Trump team insists, then they will be found during the same audit.
At the same time, Republicans continue to fight in 4 more states, Trump hopes to achieve audits there, and his supporters claim massive fraud, from voting of the dead to filling out invalid ballots.
Victory in the courts and recounts is the only possible way for Trump to keep the White House. Nevertheless, the foreign press is discussing with great interest the possibility of luring the electors from the Republican states to their side and thereby “cheat” the system.
Purely hypothetically, this would be possible, but the probability of this is vanishingly small. In theory, the mechanism works like this – local commissions refuse to approve the election results, and also do not recognize the recount data. The State Congress then votes for the winner. The choice is approved by the governor. If there is no agreement, then two groups of electors can go to the vote at once, but only the one that is approved by the current vice-president (Trump’s right hand Michael Pence) will be recognized as official.
In theory, this mechanism exists, but it was created back in the days of the Wild West when there was a real risk that in some areas of the state, attackers falsified all votes. Such a precedent has not been applied since the 19th century.
But what is stopping the Republicans from doing such a trick now? The answer is as simple as possible: the American people. For all of America, such a turn of events would mean a natural seizure of power. After this, there can be no talk of any democracy – at the next elections, the Conservatives will simply be kicked out of Congress. And the Republicans are well aware of this.
The clearest proof of this is Georgia. In this state, Republicans control all government bodies. That is, there would not even be two commissions in theory: some Republicans did not recognize the elections, others voted for Trump, and the third approved their decision and sent 16 of Georgia’s electoral votes to the current president.
However, the Republicans have already managed to reliably abandon this mechanism. The elections have already been declared valid, and this decision was supported by both the secretary of state and his governor (both Republicans). Now the courts are continuing there, but local authorities assure that only the candidate who wins according to official data will receive the electoral votes, and nothing else.
Some Western media focused on how Trump is pressuring Republicans in Michigan to refuse to approve the election results. According to a number of journalists, this indicates that the president wants to force the members of the state Congress (where the Republicans are in the majority) to reject the people’s choice and recognize him as president. However, most likely, the goal of the American leader is different.
Unlike Wisconsin, in Michigan Trump lost more than 1% of the vote, which means he cannot request a recount with an audit of the votes. However, if Republicans publicly refuse to certify elections, recounts will de facto become inevitable. And now, according to the results of the recount (if there is one, of course), the local Congress will approve the winner. The legislators themselves stressed that they will not go against the will of the people, that is, they will not nominate Trump bypassing the rules.
President Trump continues to fight for a second term. The Republican hopes to “turn over” the election results, and after all the courts and recounts to retain of US President. However, he is not at all going to seize power in a semi-legal way. After this, it will no longer be possible to govern the country. It will only turn out to “sit on bayonets” or run with a machine gun to the helicopter – as you are lucky.
